Kanye and Rihanna may not have saved Jay Z's music streaming service after all

Jay Z's big plan to turn things around at Tidal, his
embattled music streaming service, seems to be faltering.

Earlier this month, Tidal got two huge boosts from exclusives
with Rihanna and Kanye. The albums catapulted Tidal up the
app download charts. It went from not even charting on App Annie
before Rihanna's "Anti," to sitting at the No. 1 spot after
Kanye's "The Life of Pablo."

The chart below shows how Tidal’s rank in the
U.S. downloads charts has changed over time. The blue line shows
how its rank has changed relative to all other apps, while the
red line charts it against only other “music” apps.

App Annie

This lead to discussions about whether exclusives from
blockbuster artists, secured with things like getting equity in
Tidal, could help Tidal compete with heavyweight music streaming
services like Spotify. Spotify even came out with a statement
against exclusives,
calling them "bad for fans" and "bad for artists."

But now it seems Tidal's success might have been temporary. The
app has slipped to No. 60 on the US downloads charts (and No. 7
in the music category). It has fallen behind Pandora, Spotify,
iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, and YouTube Music.

It is holding slightly better in the top-grossing rankings, which
cuts out completely free apps. But Tidal has still slipped to No.
6 in music, behind "freemium" apps Spotify and Pandora.

Here are the top charts for music apps:

App Annie

Given how quickly Tidal is tumbling down the charts, a strategy
of using exclusives to continually pump up subscriptions seems
like a tall order.

But the real test will be how many of its free trial users the
service can convert to paying customers.

Before the Rihanna and Kanye bumps, Tidal had endured a
slew of high-profile departures in the months since it was
relaunched. The service had lost two CEOs, its chief investment
officer, the US marketing manager, and the senior vice president
of label and artist relations.